Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The social media platform has admitted that Russian-bought advertising had reached 126 million Americans during the US electionAP

In America the battle against fake news is vast and pervasive. It involves a president, senators and tech companies on the stand and a creeping, growing, terrified suspicion that Russia might have skewed a superpower’s choice about who should lead the free world. In Britain, meanwhile, things are a little less glamorous. So far, mainly, we have to make do with the MP for Folkestone and Hythe.

“There has not been enough analysis of what has happened around elections in this country,” says Damian Collins, who is also the chairman of parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. “And I think we need to either reassure ourselves there wasn’t a problem or actually understand it if there were. Because it would be a big deal,…

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